There was a time when taking yourself onto a plan or being stuck on the subway for some twenty minutes would bore the living hell out of you, and we mean to tell you that you’re not alone in this. Except to play games on our device, it kinds of gets old too due to the repetitiveness that is involved in games these days. There’s very little you can do when you get stuck in a place where there is no internet (Side note: when I get stuck on an island, I don’t want two things. Just one -the internet). Many of us feel this way day in, day out and to reduce the effect of boredom that these kinds of situations have on us, Netflix has stepped in to save the day again, or as in this case, save the hours.
The pioneer video streaming service has been offering its services only for a very long time now, and this means that you would not have access to content on the application if you were not connected to any network or subscribed to a data plan. There are now measures put in place to ensure that you can download content from the application for later viewing. It won’t have an additional cost to the user, making it not just an avenue to upsell its subscribers on a new feature and upgrade. According to Netflix, this move was just rolled out, and you would not have access to the entirety of shows and stories on the application, but as time goes on, this is bound to change.
The new feature would be visible when you upgrade to the latest iOS and Android version of the application which is already available for download. On getting this new version, you would see a download button beside each video, and you can decide to save it on your unit for later viewing rather than consuming it at that instant. In the past, Netflix was not so open to the idea of allowing its users get videos for offline use, but there might have been a series of factors beyond their control which influenced this. For one, their competitors in the same market such as Vudu and Amazon Video have already taken to this, and it would be wise to keep up with the trends.
Likewise, they are seen to be considering regions where there is limited or slow internet connection which can cause breakages and stoppage in streaming the videos, leading to not the best of experiences. The most amazing importance of this feature has to be that you can now consume your media on-the-go, as long as you have the video downloaded beforehand. No more boring road trips, airplane rides and boat cruises, and getting stuck in the subway just got better. What’s wrong with an extra 20 minutes of viewing already downloaded content?
As the catalog for download is not yet filled up, some of the most notable available ones are Netflix shows such as Orange is the new Black, The Crown, Narcos, Stranger Things, and the likes. There are a ton of other choices there, and of these, you have some like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Boyhood and Pulp Fiction. Parents would be even happier with the update since they can keep their children happy and occupied with choices such as Minions and Kung Fu Panda 3 which have already been added to the download options. Since we have started to feature high-end releases like this allowed for downloads, it means that there would not be any issues with adding new releases to the list later.
On the official help page of Netflix, they have outlined that you can download your videos in one of two formats – the Standard and Higher. In their words, “Standard quality is a slightly lower video resolution that requires less storage space and takes less time to download. Higher quality is a higher video resolution that requires more storage space and takes more time to download.” (n.d.). Retrieved from https://shield.nvidia.com/blog/netflix-offline-downloads. However, they failed to explain in explicit terms what they meant by high resolution, but we think we are soon to find out by ourselves.
According to market analyst, this move is a better way for Netflix to appeal more to the international markets which have become the major driving factor for the rest of the growth they now have. Likewise, the availability and speed of internet options in international regions such as Africa and Asia cannot be compared to the level of bandwidth used in the United States, giving them a way out of having to watch videos with hiccups. In the year 2016 alone, the rate at which Netflix adds users in the US has slowed down considerably, with 370,000 only signing up in the third quarter compared to the 3.2 million subscribers gained internationally.
Since the local market is getting saturated with about 47.5 million of users being from the US already, the remaining number that makes up the total 86.7 million user level are from the international market, and that is still expected to grow by leaps and bounds.
If you were wondering about your data subscription plans, Netflix doesn’t want you to because the new download feature is available on any and all data packages that you might be running. With this new one on board, Christmas just came early for the Netflix lovers.